


Some Things Illyana Never Told Kitty

by Magik3



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/F, Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magik3/pseuds/Magik3
Summary: Short thoughts that Illyana considered telling Kitty (or not) and then, for one reason or other, did not end up saying out loud.





	Some Things Illyana Never Told Kitty

  
When I miss you too much, I read your books. I put them back the way they were, not  so you won't know, but because they're yours. Elfquest was fun, the coding books don't make sense to me, but I like how code looks on the page. I tried to write out Demonic like that, but … you don't want to know what happened.  
  
*    
  
So that's how an imp made off with your Walkman, which is the real reason I had to buy you a new one and that mix tape is gone. I'm sorry I didn't tell you, it's just, we weren't in a good place about demons then.  
  
Also I don't think we can get the Walkman back. I tried with S'ym, but … you don't want to know what happened.  
  
*    
  
Anyway, that's how I lost your blue sweater. I told you it was demons at the time and you thought I was joking.  
  
By then, we were better about demons but mostly I couldn't talk about any of that if I wasn't joking. Or pretending to be joking.  
  
*  
  
I know you know I'm not joking, but thank you for letting me pretend.  
  
*  
  
After I read your Elfquest books and Star Wars comics and the Star Wars novels and tried to read coding, I thought about going the next shelf down, which is mostly poetry and history, but also I know your journal's there and I should not read that.  
  
I wondered if starting on that shelf was going to be a slippery slope to disaster, so instead I found the dirty books you'd hidden under the bed.  
  
Did you forget they were there? It looks like Lockheed pushed them to the back and piled two of your sweaters, and that skirt you've been looking for, one of my tank tops, his blue dragon blanket and three of my socks in front of them to make a little nest. (I replaced the skirt with an old T-shirt of yours and left him the rest of it.)  
  
They're the kind of dirty books you would have found at thirteen or fourteen, phasing into bookstores or libraries after hours, and secreted away. Not the same kind that I found. Yours are cute or quirky. I'd say this explains a lot about us, but it's the other way around: we explain our books.  
  
How have I never read those Ann Bannon books? I know why they're under the bed, but … well, if you want them, they're under my bed now.  
  
Also where and how (?!) did you find a reprint of that book from 1680? How have you owned such a silly book with the words "fucking exercises" in it for the last year and a half without showing it to me? Why are we not reading this together?  
  
You didn't read it, did you?  
  
You probably saved it from somewhere—a library purging its shelves for new books or some space/alien situation—and then got it back here and realized what it was. I bet you’ve forgotten you have it.  
  
Maybe I'll read it to you.  
  
*  
  
I did not do your laundry because I wanted your help with my homework. But I think you figured that out.  
  
It also was not because I dropped pizza on your bed when Lockheed and I were goofing around. But that is what I'm going to tell you next if you ask me again.  
  
And if you see through that … maybe I'll show you what really happened  
  
*  
  
I did read some of your journal eventually. Just a few lines.  
  
The part about curves and dragonfly wings—that couldn't have been a Lockheed reference when you wrote it, but it is now, isn't it?  
  
I hope you're not too mad about this.  
  
*  
  
When we dropped you off at the airport to go spend that long weekend with your mom, I sat in the car and cried for an embarrassingly long time.  
  
Storm didn't drive away. She let me look after you and cry. She didn't say anything. She looked at a map for a while, as if she didn’t know the way back.  
  
I wanted to teleport out of the car, and run and catch you and ask you to come back. Not like you haven't gone so many times to much worse places, but then you have the whole team with you. And anyway if you're off saving the world, I can't ask you to stay.  
  
This time, I just wasn't ready for you to go. You hadn't been back long and it didn't seem fair.  
  
Maybe also the airport itself, how conventional it looked, no monsters or aliens, only people doing regular people things. Like it would be possible to go after you and pull you back to me.  
  
Maybe it was the way you held onto my hand in the car, the way your fingers feel on mine: how delicate and slender your body is but then the rough places on your fingers from all the katana practice, not a contradiction, but a secret that leads to other secrets; against my skin that’s too soft, because of the magic and because the soulsword doesn’t make callouses; both of us with stronger hands than girls our age usually have, for so many reasons, and in that instant perfect because we could hold onto each other with all that strength.  
  
I had to let go. You were almost late. I had to let go or I wasn’t going to and then you were moving away too fast for me to catch in any regular-people kind of way. I watched the doors close behind you and not open again. I did not teleport. I covered my face with the hand you’d been holding and cried.  
  
Storm stopped at the store for something no one needed and left me crying in the car. She drove us the long way, so I wouldn't still be a mess by the time we got back.  
  
*  
  
Maybe because you're a genius ninja, and you have this buoyancy and generosity, people don’t see how also small you are. Sometimes when I put my arms around your shoulders, you feel little and delicate and impossible. I want to stay there, sitting under the blankets at the ends of our beds, with you existing, and me too. But somehow things keep happening around us.  
  
*  
  
I only read a few lines of your journal. But I read it more than once.  
  
That part about the cucumber lip gloss and people liking you and aliens, I think there are more people like us than we think, even with phasing and swords and magic and demons and us being girls together. Or could they be like us but not like us? Maybe I don’t want too many people like us, but as many as you want. Or maybe everyone can be like us in some ways.  
  
But only as long as we have those times, alone, when I can watch you becoming: playing in our mirror as you see yourself seeing yourself.  
  
And see me.  
  
*  
  
I read more than a few lines of your journal.  
  
I like your powers just the way they are, but if you ever do develop telepathy, let me know early on, so I can reinforce my magic—there are a few things you should not be able to read out of my brain. Besides, we both like it better that I can surprise you.  
  
*  
  
This wasn’t in your journal, but if something ever happens to me, and you end up with Peter ... ... ...  
  
I think that would be good. Better than anyone else, at least.  
  
You should have a Rasputin to take care of you.  
  
*  
  
Пока тебя помнят вгибы локтей моих, пока еще ты на руках и губах моих, я побуду с тобой.  
  
(That’s Boris Pasternak; none of my poetry is that good, not even in Russian.)  
  
*  
  
But if I did write you poetry in Russian I am thinking about the word пожалуйста. I can be the tough one and still say, “Please.” It’s better, those two ideas together.    
  
And it’s better in Russian because then it means both "please" and "you're welcome."  
  
“Please” is a fine word but it’s not as beautiful as:  
  
Пожалуйста, пожалуйста, пожалуйста.  
  
*  
  
That face I make—the one that you think means you did something a little wrong—it doesn't mean that.  
  
It means the opposite of that. All the opposites of that.  
  
  
  



End file.
